In 2018, officials in the Brdy region of the Czech Republic, a protected landscape south of Prague, set out to fix a problem. Decades earlier, the military had dug drainage channels that dried out the local wetlands. To undo the damage, the government planned to build a series of small dams that would restore the wetland and protect a nearby river from acidic pollution, safeguarding rare species like the stone crayfish.

They secured the funding, roughly 30 million Czech crowns, about $1.2 million. And then the project ground to a halt.

For the next seven years, it went nowhere. The plan got tangled in permits, environmental approvals, and disputes over who actually owned the land. Agencies negotiated with the military and the river authority, paperwork shuffled back and forth, and the wetland stayed dry while everyone waited.

Then, one day, officials went out to the site and found the job already done.
A family of about eight beavers had moved into the exact spot where the dams were meant to go and built them, out of wood, mud, and stones, entirely on their own. And they had not just matched the plan. Experts who inspected the work said the beavers had chosen their locations perfectly, creating a thriving wetland with pools and canals that was twice the size of what the government had designed on paper.

The rodents had completed a $1.2 million project for free, and arguably done it better.

😆🤣🥰🫶🏼

So I think Canada needs to go the Scottish route and rename Lake Ontario ourselves. We should call it Loch Himup.